We have had some great weather for our outings this week and the annual Terry Fox Run was a great success. This week in mathematics/science the students of grade 4 were both in the field and the lab. Students have been developing skills and knowledge of urban gardening through hands-on exploration of the community garden.

Specimens were brought back into the school for further exploration and to identify plant anatomy and life stages.

This week in Humanities, the 4th grade students continued to work on first drafts of their identity artifact write up. They were provided with an example and walked through the rubric we will be using to assess this project.

Some of our artifacts:

We also introduce the writing trait of Sentence Fluency by highlighting the beginning of our sentences and brainstorming alternate ways to start sentences. We continued to learn about the writing process by distinguishing between editing and revising. We learned that revising involves big changes to writing such as adding details, deleting information and rewriting sections. While in editing the focus is on making smaller changes such as correcting spelling, punctuation, capitals and grammar.

In addition to our work in writing, we have continued to focus on reading strategies. Students have been using sticky notes to mark places in their books where they have made text connections. 4.3 and 4.4 were introduced the strategy of questioning this week. We looked at the different types of questions that may occur when reading and assigned codes to each one. As they read their books they will now note and code their questions.

4.3 and 4.4 students have also started reflections of their time spent at Camp Sweet. They have the choice of creating a top 10 list, writing a paragraph focused on one significant event, drawing a picture with a written description, composing a poem or writing a thank you letter.